Supporting the hypothesis that Thomas
Jefferson may have given the Delapierre canvas to John and Abigail Adams is
that in 1788 the American artist Mather Brown, working in
London, painted—at Jefferson's request—a life
portrait of John Adams12 that mirrors in some respects the 1785 Delapierre portrait (see side-by-side
comparison above). In particular, the placement and angle of the
quill, pages, and other items in the Adams portrait appear
to mirror the placement and angle of corresponding items in the
Delapierre portrait.

Unless the compositional parallels in
these two portraits are mere coincidences, it appears that Brown would have
needed access to the 1785 Delapierre portrait in London when he painted the
Adams portrait there in 1788.

Jefferson visited the Adamses in London in the spring of 1786 and could have
given the Delapierre portrait to them at that time.3 If
he did, then it is likely that this was the portrait of Jefferson mentioned by Abigail Adams in her letters to him dated 23 July 1786 and 26 June
1787.

References and notes

[1] Jefferson, in a letter from Paris dated 22 October
1786, requested "Mr. Adams to set for his picture" and for "Mr. Brown to draw
it for me." (The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 10, edited by Julian
P. Boyd, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1954, p. 479.) This
portrait was delivered to Jefferson in Paris on 10 September 1788. (The
Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 13, edited by Julian P. Boyd, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1956, p. 597.) It
features a book labeled "Jefferson's Hist. of Virginia"—a notional
depiction of Jefferson's Notes on
the State of Virginia, the only full-length book he published during
his lifetime (see full text of the book at the University of
Virginia Library website). The Adams portrait was sold by Jefferson's
heirs on 19 July 1833 at a Harding Gallery auction in Boston to an unidentified
buyer, descended to George Francis Parkman, and was bequeathed by him to the
Boston Athenæum in 1908. (Marc Leepson, Saving Monticello, The Free Press, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2001,
p. 16.) But the gift was part of a diverse collection of items from
Parkman, and neither the name of the artist nor that of the subject was known
when the bequest was made. According to Dr. David B. Dearinger,
the Susan Morse Hilles Curator of Paintings and
Sculpture at the Boston Athenæum: "Shortly after acquiring the portrait,
the Athenæum made a systematic appeal to a number of American and European
scholars for their assistance with the problem of attribution. When that
attempt failed, the possibility of selling the portrait for four hundred
dollars was raised in 1913. Fortunately, no action was taken; in 1917, however,
historian and antiquarian Lawrence Park convincingly argued that the painting
was Mather Brown's long-lost portrait of John Adams." (For more details and
sources, see http://www.bostonathenaeum.org/node/983)